Author Joy Johnson has one message she hopes is heard clearly by all who attend her talks: “You are beautiful. All you burned out old broads out there are beautiful.”
Johnson, author of the BOOB Girl series (published by WriteLife, LLC), will speak this Saturday, May 9, at 10:30 am at the Greene County Community Center in Jefferson. She is hosted by the Jefferson public library.
Johnson’s target audience is more politely called “seasoned women.” BOOB is a catchy acronym for burned out old broads. The series of easy reading books features four women from very different backgrounds who become friends, adventurers and co-conspirators after being placed at Table 12 in the dining room at the fictitious Meadow Lakes Retirement Community in Johnson’s hometown of Omaha.
In the first book, the four women’s escapades – while spending nine months touring the west in a 30-foot camper, having “escaped” Meadow Lakes – include finding a dead body and eventually a murderer, closing down a porn shop, smuggling one of them from a cardiac ward, and even a burial at sea for one of the quartet (who is “replaced” in the series at the end of the first book).
The women include Maggie, an adventurer; Robinson “Robbie,” a retired college literature professor; Mary Rose McGill, a sweet, motherly Catholic; and Hadley Joy Morris-Winfield, a wealthy socialite. Part of the success of the series is in how readers see the characters, Johnson said. “All four women are all of us. Each of us has part of every one of them in us.”
Johnson is a “seasoned woman” herself, but not burned out. Her career centered on changing the way we view death and helping people through the grief process. She and her husband Marvin co-founded the Centering Corporation, a non-profit grief resource center in Omaha.
The BOOB Girls are all widows, each of them with different relationships and memories of their husbands. Johnson started the series six years ago. Just four months ago she became a widow herself. “For 37 years I’ve done grief. Now I’m in my practicum,” she said. “I’m learning firsthand about grief fatigue, about how exhausting it is. When you’re grieving, you’re just so tired. I’m learning about bereavement ADD. Our minds don’t function like they should. You forget things. You can’t focus. And you think about the hereafter. You walk into a room and you look around and you ask yourself ‘What am I here after?’”
Her own grieving hasn’t slowed her down, or quieted her enthusiasm for her writing and talking about her books.
In the past several months, while grieving, Johnson has done 80 author talks. “It restores my soul,” she explained.
She reins in her writing, spending only an hour a day at it. “That way, I’m always fresh. More than that, and I get obsessed with what I’m doing,” she said. “It gives me something to look forward to everyday, and that’s so important, especially in retirement.”
She admitted she sometimes struggles with developing plots, but that she gets good suggestions from friends and readers, and she’s not afraid to “borrow” ideas. The fifth BOOB Girl book, The Secret of the Red Cane, borrows from the Nancy Drew mysteries many seasoned women read as girls. Ten Little Puritans borrows from Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Her current project, the eighth in the series, is Nursery Rhymes and Testy Crimes. At the suggestion of friends, it includes Wee Willie Winky, Jack Sprat, and some black sheep.
A drive past a sign for Sleezer’s Fertility Clinic near Aurelia, and her curiosity about the business (cattle insemination), sparked an idea she used in a book.
She considers herself very lucky to have a passion – her writing – and a mission. “I want to make old ladies laugh,” she said.
All are welcome to Johnson’s presentation Saturday. There is no charge, and refreshments will be served. Johnson’s books will be available for sale, and she is donating a set of the first six to be awarded as a door prize.
